Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave

Warning, this game might be a little hardware intensive – it will look different depending on whether or not your computer has sufficiently sophisticated shader support (if the game is in an outlined style, then it’s displaying on the high-end mode).

edited: uploaded version which fixed graphical + mouse inversion glitches on high quality modes, sorted out control issues, and added mouse sensitivity increase/decrease buttons ([ and ]), and includes a powerpc build for osx

It was interesting and the atmosphere was pretty nightmarish. Also there was a rather insignificant but still existing bug on my computer with a Radeon HD 5750, the blurred areas were rendered upside down if the graphics quality was set to any better than Good. Didn’t notice any other differences though :)

Hello,
how extensively have you tested this on Mac OSX? Because it’s running very slow on my iMac 27″ with 8GB of DDR3@1333MHz and ATI Radeon 5750 1GB GDDR5. It’s enough to handle Black Ops with everything maxed out, this should work as well :)

Biggles, it works fine for me – my suggestion is to try redownloading it.

Juan, I’ve only tested it on my own macbook. I didn’t do anything too crazy. If it slow, I recommend lowering the resolution – that, more than anything else, should speed it up.

Facepalm, I think I’m going to have to put my hands up and say that’s a problem that I don’t want to look into – I was using pre-packaged unity shaders, and they’re a bit involved, so I really don’t want to take responsibility for them.

I think in general I’m going to be a *little* more conservative in my shader use in future, the bugs are not worth the headaches that I am finding myself having to avoid dealing with as politely as I can. ;)

Inverting the mouse made navigating the interior pointlessly hard, it really, really needed an option to change the mouse sensitivity, the DoF effect was wonky, there were key options in the configuration window that didn’t actually do anything in-game (jumping, attacking) and for an arthouse game, this didn’t seem to have a moral, which is unusual for the genre.

Very interesting game, even though the first time I didnt finish it as I had class, I came back immediately after determined to find all 3 artifacts. Took about 20-25 minutes and was quite happy when I found the last one. Not really an “ending” I noticed a small second entrance while scouting the surface after escaping. When I entered it I was horrified to find I couldnt see the exit (I did find it after about 2 frantic minutes of poking cubes)I enjoyed the game even though it gave me a whole new concept of hell.

Very freaky atmosphere. While I liked the video effects they really strained my eyes after five minutes or so. I found the sounds in each room provided interesting bearings. Definitely not an environment I wanted to hang out for long in as it was just so unpleasant. Ran fine on my win7 laptop at default game settings. Only ever found a strange spikey object but it didn’t seem I could collect it.

Tried this on “good” graphics 800×600 and it would not run. I got a black screen followed by a white screen. (This is on a MacBook with GeForce 9400M. Tried again on “fastest” and it ran okay.

I initially did not realize it was possible to use the mouse in this game. I thought the idea was that this was a game where the idea was that you were constrained in your movement, and you had to make up for the lack of vertical movement by bumping against blocks such that their inclined surfaces forced you upward and downward. The minute or two I spent thinking this was how you were supposed to play the game was actually really interesting! I liked this actually more than the game that turned out to be actually there. I was like, huh, there’s actually some strategy to this one. (There were enough and varied enough inclined surfaces within the structure it was possible to move to any arbitrary z-axis without using the mouse, but the surfaces were just sparse enough to make it challenging to consistently do so.) I didn’t begin to suspect I was playing it wrong until I reached the end of the structure and there was nowhere else to go.

Once I started playing it “correctly”, I wasn’t able to find any of the artifacts (I did find several pools of sound) and the game didn’t really convince me it would make it worth my time to actually “win” instead of just enjoying the ambience. I flew around the outside of the structure for a few minutes and was like “wheee”.

Slightly surprised at the comments describing this one as “nightmarish”. Maybe my nightmares are different from yours

The game looks very intriguing, and I’d love to give it a try, but without any type of mouse sensitivity slider, it’s simply unplayable. Even the most gentle mouse movement will result in a full 180° turn. The problem persists on every resolution, and is unaffected by my Windows mouse sensitivity setting.

I played it on Windows (on the very same iMac with ATI 5750) and it ran perfectly at 2560@1440 with Fantastic graphics.

I have to same, this game is hellish! It took me ten minutes to activate the three artifacts, half an hour to leave! It sure was a worthy experience, but one I won’t repeat: I was so releave to leave that cube hell that nothing will get me in there again :)
Kudos!

Found it almost unreasonably hard to navigate, but it’s easy for me to explain why: my visual cortex desperately wants those rhomboids to be cubes, partly because of the slowly shifting perspective.

It gave me a peculiar feeling of panic, like in a dream where you’re trying to find a classroom, and I wondered how much worse it would have felt if you’d made it a library rather than a cave, and if the faces of the rhomboids had been bookshelves. Perhaps I’m just saying that because libraries are my personal hell, though.

Interesting game, took me 20-30 minutes though I’m not sure I did it right (I tried mouse1, mouse2, and e to activate the artifacts) because there didn’t seem to be any ending screen. I missed your note and played on fantastic. I got used to the inversion but the bugged depth of field was annoying. Also for some reason the mouse sensitivity was abnormally high. I always set mine to the highest possible and it feels fine both on the desktop and in shooters, but in your game the slightest twitch would send me turning hundreds of degrees so it was difficult to maintain any sense of direction.

I never got any sort of ‘nightmarish’ or ‘claustrophobic’ feeling, rather I enjoyed the exploring. I also enjoy playing a lot of space games (Elite, X3, Freelancer, etc) so maybe they are similar. I disliked the lack of confirmation that the player receives (I didn’t think I was even doing anything until I noticed the third artifact spinning and emitting a humming sound, and as mentioned I can’t tell if I ‘won’) though I suppose that was intended.

Haven’t had a chance to finish it, but it looks interesting, if a bit on the confusing side.
On anything better than good, the DoF took the shape of a blur, but weren’t to annoying. Had no problems with mouse inversion even on Fantastic.

I’m reminded of the asteroid mining in the introduction to Lucasarts’ The Dig, which was similarly claustrophobic. Also somewhat of crawling around in the space suit in 2001. I guess in my head the structure was in a vacuum / airless environment.

I don’t suffer it, but this game made a certain amount of panic set in after repeated wandering without aim. I didn’t manage to leave.

I think more feedback on the activation of the artefacts would be good, but besides that it was great.

Reminded me of Solaris! Have you read the book? I think your asteroid comes close to one of the structures of that ocean, even thought in the book they keep changing… and that would absolutely complete the feeling of beeing very, very lost.

I touched all three artifacts, then left the sphere, and nothing happened. Not even a black screen. Was there an activation button?

Otherwise it was an interesting game. If the sphere was filled with actual decorated environments instead of minimalist sound effects to identify where you were, it would probably be more fun. It’s cool as it is, though. Thanks for making a mac version!

Fantastic game, managed to complete after 15(ish) minutes. Definitely the most emotional I’ve been whilst playing a videogame in a long while, probably going back to SotC. I didn’t find myself feeling claustrophobic inside the ball but I found it almost unbearably scary moving away from it at the end. Great work!

I remember downloading this, playing it once, getting dizzy and quitting. After a while, I went back and completed it but that game really fucked with my depth perception as I did so. Navigating around the inside of the sphere really is horrible, but the atmospheric effects do help with direction… while at the expense of my peace and calm, I must admit.

A delightfully effective experience, though one I would not rush to repeat…

You may want to think about implementing a framerate limited or something in this, although I’ll admit I don’t know how something like that is done. I started it up and almost immediately heard my video card fan spin up, checked FRAPS, and it was running at about 130 FPS! Obviously a framerate that high is unnecessary and taxing, and I quit before I could play out of fear of burning out my card.

Amazing. Took about 15 minutes… 5 to find the artefacts, and another 10 to listen my way out. With the exception of the “way out” static, I really liked the quasi-ambient sounds. I did accidentally find my way out the second door. I would have circled the entire sphere, but my vision was going out at that point, so I said “I did it!” and hit the esc. key.

Works perfectly on Win7@1920×1080 on Fantastic. I will definitely be passing this one on to friends.

That’s the first time I’ve felt genuinely lost in a ‘game’ (or whatever this is) in a long while.

My spatial awareness is usually pretty good but in an essentially featureless environment I found it a hell of a task to get out, thankfully the artifacts themselves act as waypoints so I didn’t double back on my self *much*.

One of the areas (enclosed but wide (or tall I suppose) sort of like an inner skin) with only a tiny exit is so easy to continually go over and over.

A headfudger and no mistake and oh boy was it nice to see that exit/entrance portal!

The artefact/endgame audio versus the locational audio made for a good contrast and nice feedback/reward. In fact, just enough feedback to imply that you had indeed done something, but not quite sure of what.

Technical question for you (as someone who’s working with Unity 3 as well) – are the wireframes achieved with the ‘edge-detect-normals’ shader, or a genuine wireframe shader? (as I’ve been looking for one for FRACT).

Also, the heavy DOF added some interesting implications in terms of scale. At times the spaces felt massive, and others minuscule – I dig it.

There was a script or something on the wiki that worked perfectly in indie for line rendering (w/ or w/o back-face culling) back in unity 1, but that broke in 2. (probably still on the wiki somewhere, I used it here, if you want to see the source – but it’s horribly broken in the latest versions of unity).

You’re probably not going to find an actual wireframe *shader* that functions different from the edge detect normals one – that’s more of a script task innit?

So funny story, first I wanted to preface this by pointing out that I’ve always had minor issues with claustrophobia, eve since I was a child. Keep that in mind because that just might factor in to this story!

The process of finding all three artifacts took me about thirty minutes in all, and it was a fairly pleasant experience. It was all very womb-like, I’m not sure if that was an intentional decision with the music but that’s what I took from it.

But yeah, fun times finding all three artifacts, but then when it came time to leave I had to quit five minutes into trying to find my way out to keep myself from having a serious panic attack. This is not an exaggeration.

It was similar for me to being entangled in blankets, and as long as I am okay at the moment in being entangled in blankets everything’s kosher, but the second I feel like getting up and encounter any resistance, I freak out.

Personal anecdotes aside, I did have fun with this (for the most part). Good stuff.

I also rubbed up against all three artifacts and then found the exit, although this took me many tries (I gave up numerous times throughout these past couple weeks, and just recently decided to play it through), but when I left, nothing happened. I got as far away as I could. Nothing happened. I circled the sphere. Nothing happened. What was supposed to happen? Could you put up a short video of what the ending’s supposed to be? Nothing’s more frustrating than finally manning up to do it and then nothing actually happening to show I have.

You have died. A daimon has told you that your soul must journey into a single electron to stop three superstring tangles from growing. If you do not stop them, the tangles will cause our universe’s vacuum to collapse, ending the universe as you knew it and killing all your surviving loved ones.

Wow this is a stunning game! I love how you make players use their sense of hearing to be able to search for new areas using the different noise patterns. It’s weird how small you feel when you enter that new universe. Also, I really enjoyed the fact that it wasn’t actually made out of cubes. At first, when I left the world, I didn’t think it was really going to show me an end screen, but as soon as I heard the noise and the screen started fading, I was so happy! There’s no way you could have made me so disconnected from the reality of life, and so connected to your sophisticated realm of noise and shapes. You really do a good job toying with the emotions of your viewers! Most of your games are the best games I have ever played. Thank you Increpare :)

I had ATTAATL on my computer for over a year, and often played it just to wander around for a bit, and it was always creepy to finally come across one of the artefacts. I never tried to finish the game. But I did it just now, nice ending with the discreet fading out and a little music. This is a classic game. I love games where you can just explore and just forget everything. Microsoft’s Motocross Madness (I just play practice mode and go running around, jumping off things) Bethesda’s Skyrim (The ultimate exploration game) and of course ATTAATL. Nice to keep these on a computer so at night, just jump into one of these worlds and get lost :)

This is to me, the best game on your site so far. The elements really work together and it feels like a sweet, polished, stark-feeling environment. If you plan to make another commercial game, I’d use this as a base. Maybe use the psychedelic effects from Slave Of God on this?

Anyway, scrolling through all your games, this one, aside from Slave Of God, really stands out. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember the name of the game… the one where you walk through an infirmary, and every mother you approach gives you a poem to ponder, then you go outside, and up some stairs where you wife and newborn child are, and she gives you a poem? That’s another great one. Very very stylish.

Thanks for the experience. It was a little annoying, a bit frightening, and ultimately pretty fun.

Gave going through the whole thing again with my eyes closed a try, but it was impossible for me in the time I had to do so. I did get to one artifact, but only after cheating my own eyes-closed rule once.

Funny how a human being can get used to a buzzing noise. By the time I left the sphere it felt weird to enter an area without background sound.

The experience was painfully noisy to some degree, but I was determined to finish it. I finally figured out where all the artefacts were and assumed that they activated when I got near them, cause they started moving and making noises. Once I finally found the loud white noise, I followed it back out, spun around the entity till I found where I had gone in the first time and waited…then I flew backwards, just watching the distortion of the hypercubes for lack of what to do.(That’s what they seemed like to me.) Then it finally went dark and played the music, it was an interesting and thoughtful cyberspace. Not sure how long it took, didn’t time myself.

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[...] begun until we’ve posted a dreadfully sinister indie game. Courtesy of the Indie Games blog, Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave has you navigating an ominous, claustrophobic environment using your mouse, the WASD keys and by [...]

[...] Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave is a freaky voyage into the unknown. After moving the mouse around, you’ll spot a sphere in the distance, and can move toward it using the WASD keys. [...]

[...] deal with the sphere first. For a game that just uses lines and white space, Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave does a remarkably good job of making you feel trapped in a gigantic sphere. You go in thinking it [...]

[...] Activate the Three Artefacts and Then Leave is a simply titled indie game that created a surprisingly disturbing environment. The game consists of the player floating around this strange world made of a labyrinth of cubes and blocks. Strange sounds play as the player searches around through the maze, looking for th artifacts and continually getting lost. The game’s environment and presentation is very effective at creating an unreal experience. [...]

[...] Activate The Three Artifacts And Then Leave – I don’t know where I read about this (could be something in connection to Antichamber or maybe something about the title being similar to You Have To Burn The Rope) or when I downloaded it, but on a whim, while waiting for Steam stuff to download and install, I finally tried it out today. Only trying it out for ten minutes didn’t get me far. I didn’t manage to find the three artifacts (or leave), but I’ll give it a fair shot soon enough. Having spent so much time in the Antichamber lately left me less impressed than I may have been had I not been there. [...]

[…] Brody Condon’s “650 Polygon John Carmack” is a negation; Stephen Lavelle’s “Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave” is a deprivation. The first is play’s destruction, while the second is play’s […]

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